Tag Archives: CUNY

Petraeus may not be quite all in at CUNY

2 May

General David Petraeus has been hired to teach at CUNY at the University of Southern California (h/t Anna Law):

David H. Petraeus, the former four-star U.S. Army general who resigned as head of the Central Intelligence Agency last year after confessing to an extramarital affair, will teach part-time at USC and help mentor students who are veterans, officials are announcing Thursday.

Petraeus, who commanded coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, will teach and participate in seminars on such issues as international relations, government, leadership, information technology and energy, according to USC…

…

Petraeus, 60, is supposed to start his faculty position at USC July 1 for an open-ended period, officials said.

“I am very grateful to have an opportunity to be part of a great university that prizes academic excellence, that is doing cutting-edge research in areas of enormous importance to our country, and that is known for steadfast support of its veterans and ROTC programs,” Petraeus stated in a statement released Thursday.

Someone better tell the CUNY administration: Petraeus may not be quite all in.

In a statement, Mr. Petraeus said he looked forward to leading a seminar “that examines the developments that could position the United States — and our North American partners — to lead the world out of the current global economic slowdown.”

The idea, Ann Kirschner, dean of Macaulay, said in an interview, “is an interdisciplinary seminar in keeping with his research interest in energy, advanced manufacturing, life sciences and information technology.”

In addition, she said, he will give talks and meet with students about their research projects. “We’re still figuring out how much time he’ll be available to us and how to get him as involved as possible in the life of the college,” she said. His compensation for the one-year position, which begins in August, is “still in discussion,” she said.

Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the CUNY system, said in a statement that “with his appointment, our students will have a unique opportunity to learn about public policy firsthand from a distinguished leader with extraordinary experience and expertise in international security issues, intelligence matters and nation-building.

Anyone who teaches at CUNY has to fill out and sign a Multiple Position Form, which attests to the fact that he is not doing more than eight hours of work per week outside the university. I’ll be curious to see what our newest hire writes on his.

Oh well, time for a new sign: Guess Who’s Not Teaching at CUNY!

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Petraeus is Coming to CUNY. Just “like the invasion of Iraq.”

29 Apr

In case you were wondering about this…

David H. Petraeus, who resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency last November after having an extramarital affair with his biographer, will serve as a visiting professor at the City University of New York next academic year, the university announced on Tuesday.

Mr. Petraeus, who will be the next visiting professor of public policy at the university’s Macaulay Honors College, had been approached by many universities, but settled on CUNY because he admires its diversity of students, locations and offerings, his lawyer, Robert Barnett, said in an interview.

…Buzzfeed reports this (h/t Michael Busch):

There is a quiet and conventional path from shame to redemption for American political figures brought down by personal sins, and David Petraeus has, just six months after resigning as director of the CIA, followed it with his signature focus on strategy and on his own image.

…

“The rollout is devised like the invasion of Iraq,” said one person who spoke recently to Petraeus.

…

But people around Petraeus say he’s been thinking hard about how to manage his comeback, his image, and his new role outside the national security apparatus in which he’s been a key player for a decade, and in which he’s spent his entire adult life. Petraeus has always been famous both for his intelligence and for his ability to manage the press, and he has signaled that he has thought hard about his predicament.

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God Bless Benno Schmidt

21 Apr

I love Benno Schmidt. He’s the chair of the Board of Trustees of CUNY, where I teach, and a former president of Yale. More important, he’s a man who’s spent so much time in the business world that he’s no longer capable of leaving anything to the imagination. So you get from him a refreshingly crude form of honesty that you ordinarily don’t find in academia. Certainly not in university leaders, who are so adept at making themselves misunderstood that you’d think they were trained by apparatchiks in the former Soviet Union. Or Straussians.

Anyway, Benno was interviewed by the New York Post about his plans for CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, who’ll be retiring at the end of the year.  Long story short: Schmidt wants to make things nice for Goldstein. Even though CUNY’s faculty are badly paid, even though most of the teaching is done by adjuncts who are really badly paid—like, horribly paid (they’re treated even worse)—Benno’s got his eyes on the prize: making sure Matt has a nice sendoff and a sweet retirement.

Our union at Brooklyn College has a blog, which you should be checking out regularly, and they reproduced the Post article.  Here are some highlights:

CUNY is planning a golden parachute for Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.

…

“We’ll craft a special package for Matt,” Schmidt told The Post….

…

Goldstein, a former math professor and president of Baruch College, currently gets $490,000 a year in salary, plus a $90,000 housing allowance.

Schmidt said the post-retirement salary would be less, but the board is “going to want to be on the generous side.”

“I think he’s been underpaid as chancellor…

…

But Goldstein has other income. While chancellor, he has served since 2003 as a funds trustee at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which paid him $325,000 in 2011. Last December, the board overseeing mutual funds elected Goldstein its new chairman, a post that paid his predecessor $500,000 in 2011.

He is also entitled to a New York state pension.

Schmidt acknowledged that Goldstein’s post-retirement pay is likely to stir controversy among students and faculty members amid tuition hikes and budget cuts, but said private funds may subsidize the salary.

See what I mean? As crude as the day is long.

Update (8:20 pm)

Karl Steel directed me to this hilarious exchange on Twitter about Goldstein’s employment situation.

Benno Schmidt Twitter exchange

 

Update (April 22, 11 am)

In the comments section, Tim Shortell makes this astute observation:

One of the lessons when I teach stratification is how members of the elite are socialized into believing that they deserve extraordinary privilege. So the chair of the CUNY Board can say without irony that the Chancellor is underpaid and needs to be taken care of. Benno acknowledges that this might be “controversial” but what is left unsaid is he thinks it is because faculty, staff, and students just don’t see how deserving Goldstein is. That kind of class solidarity doesn’t happen by accident; you need a lot of people telling you how great you are, over and over, so that you start to believe it yourself.

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Bertolt Brecht Comes to CUNY

8 Nov

Last month, the English Department faculty at Queensborough Community College (QCC), which is part of the CUNY system where I teach, voted to recall their chair and elect a new chair. (At CUNY, chairs are elected.)The vote was a landslide, as these things go: over 20 out of 30 full-time faculty were in favor of the recall and the new chair. On Tuesday, the president of QCC decided to overturn the faculty’s decision. Among the reasons the president gave for her decision was that the department was divided (apparently, only Soviet-style election results in which 100 percent of the people vote for the Party are acceptable) and needed time to heal (by having its decisions overturned). The president also reappointed the old chair to handle department business. Let the healing begin.

It seems fitting that all this thuggery was set in a literature department. As soon as I heard about it, I thought of Bertolt Brecht’s famous poem “The Solution,” which he wrote in the wake of the failed 1953 uprising of East German workers against the government.

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Update (November 9, 8:15 am)

You can sign a petition asking the president to reconsider her decision. Please do so.

Update (November 12, 3:15 pm)

More information on the crisis here.

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